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Old 03-06-2021, 7:39am   #1
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Default Selling a business sucks

Back in November it was announced Alcoa was selling our Rolling business to Kaiser and keeping our Smelter and Power Plant. We have a metal agreement to provide Kaiser molten metal and also Power and utilities from the Power plant. As we keep getting closer to the sale date, March 31, the BS keeps getting larger than life.

I currently have 83 hourly employees with a support staff of 16. The maintenance department is taking our vehicle maintenance shop and store room functions. We were supposed to get 8 "Truck Shop" mechanics, a planner, supervisor and fleet management personnel. Friday I find out we are getting 4 mechanics, no supervisor, no fleet management and the union is fighting any contract out I do for fleet maintenance. Let's put a cherry on that Fudge Sunday, the store room is supposed to be staffed with 4 hourly and a supervisor. I'm getting 1 Employee who is out with a medical issue and the other employee I'm supposed to get from another department but they can't release them because they are transferring 13 people out of the pot rooms to the Kaiser side.

It is disheartening to watch the fence being erected between the two sides of the plant. Here we were an integrated facility for 60 years and in less than 3 weeks we will be split. There are a lot of support services like a Machine shop, hydraulic shop, carpenter shop, Operational Services for pump trucks and IT support which we won't have in 3 weeks.

It was a pain to sit down with the union for our first talks about permanent contracting out tasks which used to be done by the union but are now going to be accomplished by contractors.

My work load has tripled and the stress load has quadrupled in the past month all with no compensation increase. I've been putting in 14 hour days to keep up managing our maintenance and trying to get in front of the separation. Everyday we find out something else we get screwed on. I feel all Alcoa is looking at is that $670 Million dollar check and not concerned about how to badly it screws the Smelter in the process.

Retirement is looking extremely good real soon. My wife and I have the state and area picked, we might purchase the house, move her and the dogs and then pull the surprise rip cord and retire.
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Old 03-06-2021, 8:01am   #2
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If you don't like the job, your last paragraph sounds like a good plan.
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Old 03-06-2021, 8:04am   #3
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That kind of mayhem in organization has got to be rough.
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Old 03-06-2021, 8:18am   #4
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Get out. Now. Life is way too short to go through it hating what you do.
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Old 03-06-2021, 8:20am   #5
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That kind of mayhem in organization has got to be rough.
I used to think the Navy was the most screwed up outfit around. They can't hold a candle to the Corporate crap. Our whole Smelter is getting tired of being cast off. It gives the appearance to all of us that we are on life support and the big guy is ready to pull the plug.
Depressing when you think of all the hard work we have done bringing the plant from a shut down plant to an operational plant in three years time only to have this thrust in our face and all the support going north of the fence. We refer to the fence as the DMZ, I expect guard towers at any time with turrets.

The whole work environment between the two sides is becoming caustic.
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Old 03-06-2021, 8:35am   #6
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Coming to TN?
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Old 03-06-2021, 8:42am   #7
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WTF?? WYE they selling the joint/splitting it up..??? makes no sense, sell the whole operation, not 1/2 of it.....watt kind of supposed mgmt. is doing that crap???
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Old 03-06-2021, 8:52am   #8
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Always chaotic when new fully or partial owners enter the picture. Seems like a good time to pull your plug. Best of luck.
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Old 03-06-2021, 9:09am   #9
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I've been at my current company for 7 years, been re-org'd 8 times, including on my first day where I was re-org'd in the first 3 hours.

It's part of working in a big company.
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Old 03-06-2021, 9:23am   #10
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I’d be gone Monday.
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Old 03-06-2021, 9:39am   #11
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The current regime is laser focused on re-offshoring manufacturing to China. I'm guessing the smelters only became profitable again because of low and steady energy prices, namely, cheap and plentiful natural gas from fracking. Well, you can see the Biden War on fossil fuels is just ramping up and the handwriting is on the wall.

Trump's policies brought steel mills, aluminum plants, and the like, back to the US, and Uncle Joe is gonna close them down again.

Personally, I think the whole thing is incredibly friggen' sad. These are American jobs, and should be a source of American pride. I guess the Chinese are gonna run their smelters with solar panels.
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Old 03-06-2021, 10:33am   #12
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If you can, get out. Life is to short.
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Old 03-06-2021, 10:57am   #13
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Many years ago, i worked for a privately held firm. first few years were good. then they started to get "goofy". we had to attend a weekend retreat (out of town) and suffer thru many presentations, the end goal of which was to convince us that working more hours, for no more money, would be good for us. hmmmm.... then they started demanding more output but no more pay for that output. hmmmm..... after about 6 months of this, i bailed and went elsewhere. a few months after i left i heard that the owner had sold the place to someone else.

ah ha!

he was goosing the books to make the place look better on paper so he could get more out of it from the buyers.

would not surprise me that your place is on a longer scam:

dump your part, raise some money from some outsider, the outsider discovers that they can't make any money with what they have bought, and 2-3 years down the road the current owner buys it back for a huge discount over the selling price. nice way to pocket $300M off some sucker and end up back where you started.

oh, the pain and suffering for the current workforce?

THEY

DON'T

CARE!!!!

it's all about the money to these people. you are just chaff. and they likely figure that if some of the old farts leave, that's fine, they'll hire some cheaper folks later. and worst case, the place fails, they still have their money.

follow the money. you are just noise to them.

get out.
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Old 03-06-2021, 11:30am   #14
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The whole deal is crazy to say the least. Alcoa is leasing Kaiser the property for the Rolling Mill, long term lease like 50 years with two 20 year options. Alcoa does not want the rolling mill, they have no idea on how to operate it efficiently. They are into the mining, refining and smelting side of the aluminum business. Or facility was built starting in 1959 with the power plant and smelter, ingot or cast house as some call it came next. The Hot Mill and Cold mills came next and then the Finishing department. You can walk from the pot rooms all the way to Finishing and never be outside. I believe there is somewhere near 121 acres under roof.

The split is taking the smelter and power plant away from the cast house and rolling side. They are literally putting a fence between the buildings and separating the two businesses. We are getting a new entry gate, modular (the ones with wheels) buildings, a new parking lot, new delivery gate and a few other leased "modular" buildings. Yeah, I see the writing of a few years before they shut down the smelter and power plant. It will take that long to unravel how the power feeds thru the smelter and establish new feeds to the other side of the plant. They will need a very large substation to handle the 20 MW swings in power for the Reversing Mill.
Too see how large of a plant I'm trying to describe:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Al...!4d-87.3266755

DAB you are correct, they don't care. They are not priming us for a sale of the smelter but rather a shut down. I don't see it being long before the plug is pulled. I see how the Union wants to protect its members but also how they are setting the Smelter side up for a complete failure. When you allow 40% of an area's work force to transfer to the Kaiser side and have to hire that many workers within 3 weeks, it is crazy to say the least. Our pot room will loose 15 people which we have to try and hire to fill. The attrition rate is extremely high for the pot room classification. Out of a group of 10 new hires, an average of 3 make it thru the 5 week training cycle. Add in normal quits and it is a difficult situation.
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Old 03-06-2021, 11:38am   #15
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Coming to TN?
Probably not. We had thought of Clarksville but housing has gone plumb stupid there. We are looking at a few different places.
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Old 03-06-2021, 12:41pm   #16
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In business, ownership change is rarely for the good from an employee viewpoint.
Having gone through it 3 times in my professional career, I ended
up leaving shortly after the takeovers due to similar complaints
the OP listed. 2 of the changes were for the betterment of me.
The 3rd, and last change was 3 years ago. I stuck out the buy-out for
5 years, each year getting progressively more work thrown my way (no pay increase during that time-frame)
and leading up to an abrupt retirement on my part.
I ended up with a menial job to tide me over until I could collect SS
at full retirement age (got that 2 years ago), and I'm still working at this job, but it may soon change.
The owner of my current job has decided to retire (he's 74), and he sold the Company (as of 12-15-2020)to a private investment firm. He will retain an ownership position in the Company, but how much I'm not sure of. He will leave at the end of March, but the shit is already rolling down hill. He promised a $5k bonus(by letter, his money, not the Company's) to all employees who stick out the full year (2021), but the way things are starting to shape up, I doubt I'll see the bonus. Luckily, I can afford to loose this job(still in a menial position, I took this job with an understanding that I don't want to be bothered by management type bullshit ass kissing.Those days are over for me, I don't need to impress anyone)
I do feel bad for the younger people there who are getting tons of crap dropped on them.
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Old 03-06-2021, 12:47pm   #17
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Quote:
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Probably not. We had thought of Clarksville but housing has gone plumb stupid there. We are looking at a few different places.
I suspect that housing is going to crash this year, due to all the evictions and foreclosures that were prohibited by law last year. Those protections on renters and borrowers have to end some time, and when they do, the market should become flooded with foreclosed properties.

I actually am hoping for that, because housing is in a peak bubble right now, and the property taxes are killing people.
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Old 03-06-2021, 2:09pm   #18
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Quote:
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I suspect that housing is going to crash this year, due to all the evictions and foreclosures that were prohibited by law last year. Those protections on renters and borrowers have to end some time, and when they do, the market should become flooded with foreclosed properties.

I actually am hoping for that, because housing is in a peak bubble right now, and the property taxes are killing people.
People are losing their rental properties from non payment from renters already, unfortunately the market is high for some reason. I think a bubble is coming soon also.
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Old 03-06-2021, 7:35pm   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 09CTSV View Post
The whole deal is crazy to say the least. Alcoa is leasing Kaiser the property for the Rolling Mill, long term lease like 50 years with two 20 year options. Alcoa does not want the rolling mill, they have no idea on how to operate it efficiently. They are into the mining, refining and smelting side of the aluminum business. Or facility was built starting in 1959 with the power plant and smelter, ingot or cast house as some call it came next. The Hot Mill and Cold mills came next and then the Finishing department. You can walk from the pot rooms all the way to Finishing and never be outside. I believe there is somewhere near 121 acres under roof.

The split is taking the smelter and power plant away from the cast house and rolling side. They are literally putting a fence between the buildings and separating the two businesses. We are getting a new entry gate, modular (the ones with wheels) buildings, a new parking lot, new delivery gate and a few other leased "modular" buildings. Yeah, I see the writing of a few years before they shut down the smelter and power plant. It will take that long to unravel how the power feeds thru the smelter and establish new feeds to the other side of the plant. They will need a very large substation to handle the 20 MW swings in power for the Reversing Mill.
Too see how large of a plant I'm trying to describe:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Al...!4d-87.3266755

DAB you are correct, they don't care. They are not priming us for a sale of the smelter but rather a shut down. I don't see it being long before the plug is pulled. I see how the Union wants to protect its members but also how they are setting the Smelter side up for a complete failure. When you allow 40% of an area's work force to transfer to the Kaiser side and have to hire that many workers within 3 weeks, it is crazy to say the least. Our pot room will loose 15 people which we have to try and hire to fill. The attrition rate is extremely high for the pot room classification. Out of a group of 10 new hires, an average of 3 make it thru the 5 week training cycle. Add in normal quits and it is a difficult situation.
Dude, I'm sorry to hear you are going through this, but you really do understand it perfectly. The money guys don't care. They have a plan to make money on all this shuffling around, and they DO NOT CARE about the business or the people who work there. I got kicked out of Corporate America under similar conditions, the Corporation that owned "McGraw-Hill Education (MHE, where I worked), sold us to "Private Equity" (PE) for a shit load of money. The PE guys did not give a shit about the business, or the people. The first thing they did was fire the entire management staff, including me, my boss, and my boss's boss, among many others. Folks were walking out the door saying "without decent management, this business in unsustainable". It was all I could to to just agree with them, and not tell them the reality is that the PE folks don't care.

You see, these folks ALWAYS have an "exit strategy". I the case of our buyers, it was to get rid of EVERYTHING that looked like "overhead", increase the margins dramatically, and then sell the remnants to some other big publisher for a profit because that other publisher already has their own overhead, so they don't need folks like me.

Fast forward a few years, and it became obvious that the PE folks' plan was ****ed. The publishing biz was in the tank, and none of the big publishers were interested in paying top dollar for what was left of MHE, so their original plan was not going to work. Guess what? They didn't care. As the margins were increasing from cutting the business to the bone, the PE guys were borrowing every dollar they could based on the then-current cash flows. Before long, the had all of their investment back, and had successfully pushed all of the risk onto the debt holders.

Since then, they have tried to IPO (unsuccessfully), merge with another publisher (Cengage, also unsuccessfully), and are still looking for a way to "cash out". They aren't in any hurry, since whatever they get for it will be all-profit.

Said another way: They don't care about damage to the business, sustainability of the business, the people working for the business, or anything else other than their own return on their investment. I'm not saying I agree with it, but at least I understand it.

It sounds to me like your new owners have different plans, but the level of caring is exactly the same IMO.
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Old 03-06-2021, 7:48pm   #20
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Damn, threads like this make me so glad I was fortunate enough to be able to retire three years ago at age 62.
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